A petty snub by the borough president or a show of respect for his mother — you decide.

The Central Brooklyn Independent Democrats honored a handful of neighborhood groups and community leaders at its annual dinner this Sunday — including Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn, a group that is fighting Bruce Ratner’s Atlantic Yards project.
As is custom at such dinners, which double as fundraisers, Borough President Markowitz took out an ad in the evening’s program. The ad congratulated all the honorees by name — except DDDB, which has attacked Markowitz for his support for Atlantic Yards.

Of course, it was no oversight.

“I am a proud CBID member ... but on rare occasions, I may not agree that one of their honorees is worthy,” he told The Brooklyn Papers in a statement. “Besides, my mother always taught me that if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.”

DDDB spokesman Daniel Goldstein fired back: “DDDB has a powerful base of support and has done the work of informing the community about Ratner’s plan — which Borough Hall has failed to do … We have over 400 volunteers, well over 2,000 individual donors and a newly announced advisory board of prominent, influential Brooklynites. Snubbing us snubs not only CBID, but thousands of Brooklynites. It is unfortunate that this is how our borough president behaves.”

Other honorees at the 37th annual dinner, at Park Slope’s Montauk Club, were Jeremy Creelan of the Brennan Center for Justice, District Leader Alan Fleishman, Councilwoman Darlene Mealy (D-Brownsville), activist Warren Miner, Concerned Citizens of Greenwood Heights, South Park Slope Community Group, and Park Slope Neighbors.

View discussion (0)

Enter your comment below

Name: Neighborhood:

By submitting this comment, you agree to the following terms:

You agree that you, and not BrooklynPaper.com or its affiliates, are fully responsible for the content that you post. You agree not to post any abusive, obscene, vulgar, slanderous, hateful, threatening or sexually-oriented material or any material that may violate applicable law; doing so may lead to the removal of your post and to your being permanently banned from posting to the site. You grant to BrooklynPaper.com the royalty-free, irrevocable, perpetual and fully sublicensable license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, perform and display such content in whole or in part world-wide and to incorporate it in other works in any form, media or technology now known or later developed.

Send a Letter to the Editor

First name

Last name

Your neighborhood

Email address

Daytime phone

Your letter must be signed and include all of the information requested above. (Only your name and neighborhood are published with the letter.) Letters should be as brief as possible; while they may discuss any topic of interest to our readers, priority will be given to letters that relate to stories covered by The Brooklyn Paper.

Letters will be edited at the sole discretion of the editor, may be published in whole or part in any media, and upon publication become the property of The Brooklyn Paper. The earlier in the week you send your letter, the better.